dollarbin - Tumblr blog

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #23:

Landing on Water

Neil Young often struggles to read the fine print.

When he decided to save the world from environmental destruction he hired a film crew and wrote an entire album about transitioning his beloved Lincoln away from fossil fuels before putting any actual engineers to work. Thirty years earlier, after first seeing Star Wars, he assembled an entire crew of jawas to act as his roadies before checking in with George Lucas. Lucas sued; the Lincoln literally blew up.

And when, in 1986, Neil buckled up in David Geffin's private musical jet and got to work on his first truly ambitious record with broad popular potential in nearly a decide, he hired David Kortchmar as his co-pilot.

What the hell was Shakey thinking? Kortchmar had spent almost 20 years adding mediocre touches to Carole King and James Taylor records; he'd then gone on to mess up Linda Ronstadt's 70's sound and had recorded a solo record entitled Kootch. I'd love to paste in a sample of that album's horrors but it appears that no one, in the entire universe, has uploaded a single track from the album to YouTube.

Nevermind, here's the album's lead track; the kookiemonster himself probably posted it, sure that 50 years later his moment had finally come. I think you and me are the first person to ever listen to this song:

Geffen surely passed Danny Boy's resume to Neil at some point around 1985 and begged him to consider it. "Give me anything, Neil, anything. Just so long as it does not sound like Old Ways 2: Even Older."

Young, in turn, was surely about to use Kootchie's resume to wipe his dog Elvis's ass; but then he saw something of interest:

Kootch had produced Don Henley's smash 84 record Building the Perfect Beast. And Young surely knew that album's lead track; after all, it remains one of the best white man songs of the 80's:

Who wouldn't want to grab hold of the guy responsible for such a song? Neil was probably just as taken with the high end schmaltz in its video as he was with the driving, instantly classic tune: once he had Korcharmer in his pocket, Neil surely fantasized that he too would soon be all over MTV, shirtless and grinning, surrounded by fawning jawas and buxom ladies.

But he should have read the fine print!

Building the Perfect Beast is not perfect. Indeed, it is alternatively transcendent and unlistenable. Spend a moment with the credits and you'll see why: the 4 good songs feature Tom Petty's Heartbreakers; Ben Tench, Stan Lynch and, most importantly, Petty's lead guitarist Mike Campbell lent Henley their mighty hands as he deftly climbed out of his rock and roll casket just moments before Geffen ordered him interned in the earth.

But the rest of the album? It's pure Kootchie Kootchie.

I dare you to try and survive all of Man With a Mission, one of the non-Heartbreaker tracks. Somebody get me a bucket...

... cause I need to spew chunks all over Henley's manicured perm.

And Boys of Summer itself? It's a Mike Campbell demo that Tom Petty himself took a pass on before Henley seized it and wrote some (admittedly pretty great) lyrics. And what, you ask, did the Cokemiester do on the track? He probably suggested more synths, thereby earning himself a co-writer credit; happily Henley passed.

Neil clearly missed these vital details. He thought he was gonna get his very own Boys of Summer vibe in the studio and, oh boy, that's not what he got. (And just imagine for a moment how cool it would have been if Young had hired The Heartbreakers instead of Danny Cockstapler. Imagine Landing on Torpedoes nestled majestically in Neil's catalog.)

My famous brother has ideas of his own about all this. He recently claimed in print that Landing on Water, the record Neil and Handy Danny ultimately made, is better than Trans.

Well, huh.

On the one hand, my brother is famous for a whole bunch of reasons. I mean check out his blog right now and you can get your hands on his first solo record, which he and others claim sounds like Yo La Tengo meets Guided By Voices (they're wrong; rather, it sounds like my brother meets Arthur Lee, as produced by Robert Smith) for the very Dollar Bin price of absolutely nothing.

But on the other hand, he once claimed that Dylan's Live at Budokan was good, and some of you remember how I shredded his soul and stomped upon his dignity in response.

So let's put him to the test once again and give Landing on Water a fresh listen. I just hope I don't get korched in the process...

Side 1 opens with a lot of keyboard flatulence; in Weight of the World it sounds like Neil is hauling around all of Young Dan's new wave records on his back, rather than the world's mass, and they all seem to suck. Neil does supply a sensitive bridge chock full of self-pity. But it's hard to pity a guy who chose to make this record with D. Corkboard instead of Crazy Horse.

Next up is Violent Side and the song is certainly interesting. Typically, male penned confessionals focus on self-abuse and lady troubles. But here Neil counsels himself to take a chill pill before he breaks someone's face.

It should be great. But Young lets D. Crappy dress the track in plodding, anthemic garbage, complete with a choir. The song is about anger; Neil should have brought in Billy Talbot and David Briggs to kick Danny's wine cork sniffing ass.

Hippie Dream is, deservedly, the best known track from Landing on Water. The song feels important from the get-go and the Crockpot man's arrangement is less busy than otherwise on the record. Everything here is enjoyable sinister.

I imagine Neil had a fairly rough time trying to explain this song to Crosby and Stills a year or so later when they got back together on Young's ranch to make the mostly terrible American Dream.

Neil: Hippie Dream is not really about you two; it's more of a feeling thing, you know?

Crosby: Cut the crap, Neil. You said our wooden ship was capsized in excess, and that's just not true. Somebody hand me my golden goblet of unicorn milk; I'm thirsty.

Neil: No, seriously, I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings!

Stills: Dude, what are feelings?

The album's fourth song, Bad News Beat, is pretty dull filler. What I find fascinating is that Yo La Tengo covered it in the late 80's. The song is a pretty good vehicle for Ira Kaplan's cranky nerd vocal stylngs, sure, but their performance mostly makes me realize just how earnestly people sat down to consider this record back in the day. Everyone really needed Shakey to resume putting out important music, and they didn't know if it would ever happen again. And so they seized on mediocre fare, talking themselves into its worth. Happily for them and us Ragged Glory was just around the corner...

Side 1 culminates with a pretty great song which, like just about everything on the record, would be much better as a Crazy Horse epic. I've written about Touch the Night a bit elsewhere. But the video, which is just like the one for Boys of Summer if you consider pigs and pigeons as basically the same thing, always deserves another posting.

OOOOOOO-ooo-WA! Hey, everyone: touch the night.

Side 2 is a bit less interesting. People on the Street sounds like it was intended for The Village People; Hard Luck Stories sounds like it was written and performed on an Apple 2E, I Got a Problem is better by the Shocking Pinks and Drifter, which features an annoying "did somebody step on a duck?" riff, totally sucks, in spite of its fairly gnarly guitar soloing.

But the second to last song, Pressure, is my favorite thing on the record. Packed tight with, well, pressure, it rocks, kinda like you're suddenly enjoying a terrible trip to the dentist.

While listening to this song I start to feel like my famous brother is right yet again. Maybe Landing on Water really is better than Trans... then again, maybe not.

Regardless, not even Danny Korchmar can ruin this frantic song. Go Neil go.

Cheers Everyone.

[dollarbin]

Sandy Saturdays #19:

Fotheringay on The Beat Club

This blog is my only intended internet footprint. Don't look for me on snap chat or Google Meats; I prefer my meats in my belly, not on a screen.

Nevertheless, there is probably more video of me cajoling and then hectoring my students on the web than there is of Sandy Denny making music.

And that's ridiculous.

All we've got is some brief BBC footage from early in her solo career (I'll get to it in a future Sandy post), a 30 second clip of her return to Fairport Convention that we've already discussed, a shot of her singing Matty Groves from 1975 that looks like it's from 1860, and today's focus: a hard (for me anyway) to track down 20 minute set on German TV that shows her fronting Fotheringay in 1970.

You can find the full video on people's Facebook pages and pieces of it portioned out on Vimeo (search Beat Club, Fotheringay). But none of those sites seem willing to be pasted in here.

Meanwhile, on YouTube, all you can find is the concert's least vital slice of the action: Trevor Lucas and his preposterous mutton chops capably singing Dylan...

But where the hell is the rest of the show? Does someone at YouTube hate Sandy Denny? That can't be it; there's nothing about Denny to hate. Or is her estate blocking the footage in preparation for its future use in an 8 hour tell all directed by the hobbit guy? Good God, I hope so. Or are the Germans themselves to blame, selfishly hoarding their Sandy Denny all to themselves? Achtung my wrath, Germans.

Someone out there: confess!

Anyway, here's the audio for Sandy's hypnotic Nothing More, which opens the set, and I think you'll hear two things right off the bat: a) the song and this performance are achingly perfect, full of tremble, power and surge, and b) no wonder the band didn't make it big if this is how they led off their concerts.

Denny here is making serious art for grown-ups; but the listening public were not grown up at that point, nor are we now; after all, I just dropped the needle on a Graham Nash record.

Happy Saturday everyone...

P.S. What's your over/under guess for how long it will take my famous brother to read this, get exasperated, then email me a working and easy-to-locate-for-everyone-else-on-the-planet link for the full Beat Club concert? I'm guessing 43 seconds...

[dollarbin]

Nickel Bin #13:

Loudon Wainwright's Dead Skunk

It's Wednesday, May 29th 2024, and, if all goes well, tomorrow morning the sun will rise, all warm and smiling, and the little birds will tweet merrily as I rise up from sleep, filled with boldness and joy.

Then, after five days spent creeping around in a mask like it's 2021 all over again, my Covid test will come back negative at the very same moment that a New York jury declares Donald Trump a convicted felon.

There will be world peace by lunch time and my students will welcome me back on campus with cheers, eagerly showing off their completed homework.

It will be so sweet. But, what's more, as icing on my turntable, (I don't like cake) I'll return home at the end of the day to find a big box of money sitting on my doorstep. There will be a mixture of denominations, most of them large, inside and it will be a very big, very heavy box. A handwritten note will accompany the bills, a note that will go something like this:

Dear Author of the Dollar Bin,

Please accept this small token of our joint appreciation. We agree with everything you write.

Sincerely,

Stephen Stills and Neil Young

I can see it all now: a vision of the definite and glorious future. Great things are surely coming my way.

And when they come, I will break into song. Probably this one.

But who am I kidding?

The sun will be hot, the birds will be crows, the Covid will linger, Trump will get away with it yet again, peace will remain a dream some of us, and Joni, had, and my students will cheer when I miss another day because, obviously, none of them will have done their homework.

And that big box of money? It won't be on my doorstep. Rather, I'll have this laid out all over my street:

Don't worry about me though folks. Even as everything goes terribly wrong all over again I'll have this wonderfully silly theme song for our collective moment, which is the only piece of music on the planet which uses olfactory in its rhyme scheme, from Wainwright's easy-to-find-in-The-Dollar-Bin Album III in my head all day long.

And therefore I'll be grinning.

UPDATE 24 HOURS LATER: The birds sang, Trump's now indeed a convicted felon, my test was negative and most of my students actually did their homework. And what was I humming in my head through it all? Yeah, you got it, it's dead:

Yeah you got your dead cat and you got your dead dog On a moonlight night you got your dead toad frog Got your dead rabbit and your dead raccoon The blood and the guts they're gonna make you swoon

I'm not home from school yet, but based on the great state of the day so far, I now actively anticipate encountering that big box of money on my doorstep an hour from now. Thanks in advance Neil and Steve!

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #22:

Covid Edition

Well, I've got the bug again Dollar Binners: a bit more than two years after getting Covid for the first time at my first real public event of that surreal era, a Valerie June concert that I fruitlessly masked up for, I felt off yesterday, then saw the dreaded double bars on a test I hauled from deep in the medicine drawer this morning.

It's Covid 2.0 for yours truly. Woo-wee.

I'm determined to be less sick this time around. My first bout set in while on holybobs with my buddy Greg and our families. I coped with the first day of feeling under the weather, unaware of the positive tests that would follow, by drinking about 10 Miller High Lifes; I figured the Champagne of Beers was just what Dr. Fauci ordered.

Greg matched me drink for drink and we had a blast, as always. Then came the most delirious night of my life: I was midway through an immense Beatles biography at the time and I became feverishly convinced that Ringo was there with me, processing his fraught childhood. I provided Ringo with some really good support; it felt like we were on a magic carpet in high turbulence.

And then I never really got better; yeah, I am one of those long-Covid people, dealing with periodic pain and setbacks that are happily surface level and not nearly as bad as some folks out there. Friends will tell you that I was kinda nuts beforehand so we can't blame Covid for whatever nonsense I've spewed at you these past 9 months (this is our 92nd post together!).

So this time around I'm taking the opposite approach: I'm chugging water and vitamins instead of High Lifes and I'm spending the day in isolation, visiting with all of you instead of Greg or Ringo. Hopefully neither of them show up: I'm a sucker for Greg and Ringo alike.

But let's set all that aside and talk about the first six months of Covid and how Shakey got us through it. Maybe you remember: Neil responded to the shutdown by moving to a mountaintop somewhere in Colorado and by cancelling all fees on his forever BETA level website. I don't know about your house, but at mine it was therefore Neil Young Time all the time.

To begin, we suddenly had access to all of Shakey's movies, most of which were just about mythical for hopeless internet cheapskates like me. I saw everything from the really pretty magnificent Mountaintop, which I'll write about in a future post, to Solo Trans, a scripted Vocoder/Shocking Pinks Neil vehicle directed by Hal Ashby, the guy who made Harold and Maude.

I doubt you have, and kinda hope you don't have, an hour to dedicate to this film so I'll summarize it for you here: imagine an invented from the ground up 80's newscast from Dayton, Ohio, complete with cheapo graphics and synthetic, asinine theme music dedicated entirely to covering a Neil Young show with paid, freaking out, extras filling the front row.

The whole thing starts with Harvest heavy dullness, then gets momentarily lovely for Helpless. Young then does a standard take of Ohio and attempts to make his amazing biography dull through Don't Be Denied before we get into the almost-but-not-quite-weird-enough Trans era stuff, including a preview performance of Landing on Water's I've Got a Problem.

Trans is great. But Solo Trans? Unless Neil is soloing on Mr Soul it's pretty underwhelming...

But The Shocking Pinks show up at the end, at which point the film tastes great, like soapy nuts. Neil sweats buckets and even goes ahead and invents yet another band while he's at it, turning the Shocking Pinks into The Bluenotes for Don't Take Your Love Away from Me.

Graham Nash is in 1 second of the film and Stephen Stills only shows up in archival footage - which is fitting for musicians of their stature - and Neil's even-more-beleaguered-than-my-own wife, Peggy, plays a catfighting groupie.

Ashby must have spent the entire shoot either drunk or cashing his paycheck. Probably both. Meanwhile, Neil had a vision for the film: The Wall meets Loony Tunes. And he nailed it.

Neil offered us more than just his bonkers films during Covid. We also had The Fireside Sessions: periodic footage of Neil in isolation. We got to see him wash his hands, talk earnestly to his dogs and play obscure and obvious tracks alike, all of it recorded in the most amateurish manner possible on his wife's iPad.

It was pure Shakey; shambolic, earnest and awesome.

Okay, that's all I've got. Ringo's calling and he wants my support. Thanks for visiting me in isolation everyone!

[dollarbin]

Sandy Saturdays #18:

Fairport Convention's Farewell, Farewell

I know it, my beleaguered wife knows it, and now you know it too: when I choke on my last taco and keel over for good there are two required tracks to play damn loud at my funeral, and they are both by Fairport Convention.

The opening procession, which should feature just a few thousand lucky-to-be-included mourners, each of whom will bear their favorite Dollar Bin record in their arms as emblem of their grief, will feature the band's elegiac Battle of the Somme.

There's no better track to walk in contemplation to. Dave Swarbrick's more patient than usual but still uniquely textured fiddle overlays Richard, Simon and the other two Dave's perfect playing. (Yeah, that's right: the band had three Daves; but that's nothing: my family features not three, but four Daves, and sixteen Buckminsters; sadly all of them are imaginary. Wait; that's not true! One is real: I've got an uncle named Dave. Sorry I forgot about you for a moment Uncle David!)

But back to my funeral...

All you attendees will be tear streaked and spent when The Battle of the Somme draws to a close. But my great-great-grandchildren will then lighten the mood by taking the lectern and recalling just how ridiculous grandpa was in his later days, always dropping the needle on Neil Young's Trans during pancakes at breakfast and showing off his futuristic dance moves long before he took the time to strap on either of his wooden legs.

Next, Stephen Stills will speak. He'll be 186 years old and floating in a vat of formaldehyde, preserved against death by global consensus so as to balance out the cosmic balance between the musically good (as represented by Neil Young, who will also be alive and well at that point without any scientific interventions; Shakey simply cannot quit) and the musically terrible. Stephen will share his profuse thanks to me for having resuscitated his career way back in the mid-2020's: I currently mention him in writing more than any other human being on the planet and all publicity, as they say, is good publicity. You're welcome Stills!

But once Stephen is done bubbling out his gratitude from a basin of preservative goo it'll be time for the ceremony's centerpiece, the song I'd select as my only possession for life on a desert island, Fairport's Farewell, Farewell, which features the loveliest guitar tone, melody and vocals of any song on the planet.

Seriously. Just listen.

Wow. For me there will never be two more beautiful minutes of art. Listen to Sandy dig up and then cradle the root of all human woe and potential during the song's final line.

The winding road does indeed call. And I'm so excited to see where it will take me in the coming decades.

Cheers Everyone.

[dollarbin]

Nickel Bin #12:

The Roches' Losing True

Ah yeah, Dollar Binners, it's Roches time. We celebrated the beginning of this already silly year with Maggie, Terre and Suzzy's epic monster track, The Hammond Song: five minutes of bizarre and perfectly harmonic storytelling swirling around Robert Fripp's equally bizarre and perfect guitar effusions.

Losing True, from the sisters' third record, Keep on Doing, is the natural sequel to The Hammond Song. And, unlike the Roches' coveted first record, Keep on Doing is a certified Dollar Bin mainstay: it's relatively easy to track down alongside mid to late late seventies Carole King albums (which are optional to your collection) and the essential to us all 70's titles from the Lord and Lady of the Dollar Bin, Gordon Lightfoot and Linda Ronstadt.

Take a listen.

There's no better surf to be had than on this swell of voices. The sisters curl and churn around one another, cradling us in warmth and bold sun sparkle.

We already know that they skipped town, risking everything, to go down Hammond, and, as promised, they never came back. Losing True tells us what happened next. They, or maybe it's just the iconically elfin and yet deep throated Maggie, who wrote both songs, wound up with the wrong guy. But now they're ready to ditch Loudon Wainwright, who seemingly had a thing going with every female singer-songwriter of that era, like a dead skunk in the middle of the road, and reunite with one another in jubilant song.

Happily, they invite Fripp to the reunion. He'd sat out their underwhelming and poorly produced sophomore record but he's back on Losing True with his signature, other-worldly harmonics and blatant skills. Fripp knows better than to upstage the ladies and it's a shame we don't have 16 more sequels to The Hammond Song to keep on spinning on a suddenly sweet weekday.

Cheers Everyone...

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #21:

Time Fades Away, Part 2

So. I headed north as promised last night, straight into L.A., Neil's very own uptight city in the smog (city in the smog), to see my famous brother make some very grown up music.

It was amazing and upsetting. Amazing in that Prairewolf are, for our current moment, what Booker T and the MG's were for 1967.

But it was upsetting in that my famous brother and his almost as famous bandmates did not obey my directive and perform Neil Young's Yonder Stands the Sinner with a generous dollop of their own wordless cosmic white man cowboy jazz funk slathered on top. Rather they played songs from their first two records.

I made some videos but have no idea how to paste them in here. If I could figure it out, you'd hear me grooving and hollering and jostling about as everyone in the room blissfully lost their minds amidst the rowdy crowd action and psychedelic vibes.

Naw, it wasn't really that kinda show. Even though Dr. Demento himself was allegedly in the room everyone just sat and nodded with appreciative thoughtfulness while they played. My buddy Greg points out that we probably looked a lot like the studious white folks in the Booker T clip. The band made no speeches and pensively sipped at their Tecates. The projected images behind them swirled and danced in time with my brother's patient yet nimble fretwork. I was filled with intensely mellow joy. Then I drove home.

It was awesome.

And yet, because Prairiewolf didn't bust out a single Time Fades Away cover, I do need to issue the following apology: yesterday's post had nothing whatsoever to do with Neil Young's reckless live album of entirely new songs from 73. Please accept my humble apologies and send all your angry feedback to my famous brother at doomandgloomfromthetomb.

I didn't understand Time Fades Away on any level as a teenager. Neil sounded cranky throughout; the pace was frantic until it was dull; there were no noticeable guitar solos (somehow I didn't notice the fairly groovy interludes on Last Dance); and even at the tender age of 16 I wanted to find David Crosby and punch him squarely in the nose for smugly interrupting the record to announce that what followed would be "a little experimental".

For reasons that are not well-founded or clear I've always associated Crosby with my middle school woodshop teacher Mr Halferty: he would not let us touch any wood in his classroom. Rather, we made keychains and sugar scoopers (as if any of had sugar barrels at home that needed accessing a la Laura Ingall's Farmer Boy) outta plastic and he drove an El Camino. On the last day of school we surreptitiously placed all our finished projects around the wheels of his sweet ride gleefully figuring that as soon as he peeled out there'd be shattered plastic everywhere.

The plan was to hide in the bushes and watch it all go down. I don't think we followed through on that part of the plan. But I felt it then and I feel it now: neither Mr. Halferty nor Crosby have any business on a Neil Young record of any kind post Deja Vu (unless they're glowing unobtrusively in the background as in Through in My Sails).

And so I didn't dig Time Fades Away as a kid.

But it's over 30 years later and I now carry Neil's cranky frantic energy on the record around with me just about everywhere I go. I berate my 11th grade students whenever they enter the classroom more than 6 seconds late or act like their phones are their friends. I drive either way too fast or way too slow. I dream of punching Donald Trump, not David Crosby or poor old Mr. Halferty, squarely in the nose.

So, these days Time Fades Away is right up my alley.

Let me count the ways:

The title track sounds like it's played by angry, drunk monkeys. I mistakenly had my turntable turned up to 45 rpm this weekend when I first dropped the needle; aside from the fact that Neil sounds like a bubbly chipmunk at that speed the song sounds basically the same: terrifying, and good.

Neil must have issued 48 different live versions of Journey Through the Past in the last decade and a half. They're all good. But on Time Fades Away's original take Neil is more plastered than on all the other versions combined.

And you know what they say when it comes to Shakey and Freezermen concerts at Vassar College in 01: the drunker, the better.

As Neil works towards and through the last chorus I feel the room spin wildly around him. It's terrifying, drunk and bleak; it's awesome.

Yonder Stands the Sinner is one of the most unhinged tracks in Young's entire oeuvre. It does not sound experimental, David Crosby; rather it sounds wonderfully insane. At 16 years old I just scratched my head and thought about playing The Joshua Tree or something else instead. Today I feel like Neil is reading the words inscribed on my very soul:

Neil Young: he calls my name without a sound.

Up next we've got L.A. I grew up there. It was alright. But this song is way better: Neil borrows much of the hook from Come on Baby Let's Go Downtown and slows it way the hell down. He's already finding his Tonight's The Night sound and groove here with Ben Keith alongside him, the steel guitar throwing shadows on every available wall of the theater. This is probably my favorite song on the record.

Love in Mind, like The Bridge on Side 2, is just lovely. Neil could nail a ballad like no one else at this point. Everything is fragile and quavering. You want to give the poor guy a hug and recommend a good therapist.

My nearly 80 year old mother talked after the show last night about how seeing her son on stage in Prairiewolf was the opposite of all the Kris Kristofferson shows she saw around LA before Kris became a household name. Seeing her drunk, vulnerable, potentially doomed and beloved cousin play live was utterly stressful. She saw that Kris was not well but that he simply had to make earnest art anyway.

I think it would have been similarly stressful to have been an alive and well Neil Young fan in 1972/3. (I was born in 76 and encountered Young as he entered his 90's heyday.) Fans on the Time Fades Away tour must have worried about whether he was even gonna make it through the show without keeling over.

Folks my age and younger have never been properly stressed out by any of Neil's Ditch era; we encountered all that wonderful music with the knowledge that he survived it all; indeed, we knew that he spun the whole era on its head and made it the foundation for his greatness rather than the soundtrack for his demise.

When it comes to great art like this record, time doesn't fade away. It morphs, it swells and it alters perspectives. Kinda like the lights and sounds I saw on stage in LA last night... And check it out: I figured out how to put in a video of it all which captures... almost nothing. But take my word for it, it was awesome!

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #20:

Time Fades Away, Part 1.

I'm seeing my famous brother on stage tonight in LA; you should come. He's been making killer music for a full 30 years but, because we live far apart, this will be just the fourth time I've seen him play a proper gig.

Let's see...

First there was the Don't Call Me Judas show I set up for him and his fellow high school VU nerd buddies at Pomona College around 95/96: their lead singer was mostly too terrified to perform so my brother and this sweet guy took over the vocals while handling all the stringed instruments. I invited the whole damn college but only about 8 students actually attended. I got embarrassingly drunk (a guy who insisted his name was Cruiser had shown me how to shotgun beers earlier that evening), and so I demanded that they perform their cover of Frank Black's Freedom Rock twice. I was so wasted that I thought my name was Chip...

Then I saw one of his many college bands, The Freezermen, at Vassar College in the Spring of, I don't know, maybe 01. Picture Sweet Caroline, Shout, Happy Together and the like as performed by a Kim Deal type on drums and my brother and his soon to be Ph.D buddy fumbling in search of appropriate chords while the captain of the baseball team turned in fight club vocals. Happily they all leaned on a dude with a keyboard turned up to 11 to make everything recognizable. Everyone in the room, except for that keyboard player, had guzzled an industrial soup pot's worth of suspicious punch; after the show we repaired to the college radio station control room where I repeatedly risked FCC fines on air while attempting to describe the ineffable effects of the Incredible String Band on one's own sense of self for an audience of none; it was one of the better nights of my life.

Next came a Forces at Work show in Denver and I have no real idea when that was; probably ten years ago. They opened for a San Diego based touring party band who opened for... someone else. I clearly don't remember much but I've still got my Forces at Work t-shirt and I know they took a break from performing my famous brother's songs to play I'm Waiting for My Man at a perfectly glacial pace; it made Danger Bird sound like a dance track.

It too was unspeakably awesome.

I hereby call upon My Famous Brother to do three things: First, he needs to put all of the 20+ years of independently made music he's recorded under the name The Dwindling Party up on Bandcamp or YouTube or something so I can share it with all of you and write about it.

Secondly, he needs to name for us the two other bands from that Forces at Work show in the comments section below; he and his two fantastic band mates are touring without any physical or logistical support while surely keeping up their full time day jobs' professional work. Plus my brother is busy being a good husband and dad and writing his daily blog. At the same time Prairewolf just polished off their second, soon to be issued, full length LP which sounds like Dylan's Pat Garratt meets Alice Coltrane. And he interviewed none other than Linda Thompson earlier this week.

So he's clearly got plenty of time on his hands and nothing better to do than fill up the comments section below. Clearly.

(Wait! The Donkeys!? I think that was the name of one of the bands...)

Thirdly: he needs to get Prairewolf to cover a song from Neil Young's fabulous and maddening drunken fight of a record Time Fades Away tonight. Why? Well, obviously, they need to do so because otherwise there will be absolutely no connection whatsoever between what I just wrote about and the title of this blog post.

So get busy already, famous brother. I want Yonder Stands the Sinner reworked in Prairewolf's patented cosmic white guy instrumental cowboy free jazz vein, and I want it 12 hours from now.

I'll report back tomorrow after the show with Part 2 of this post. And I promise to actually write about Time Fades Away while doing so...

Dear Stephen Stills, you suck. See you at tonight's show!

[dollarbin]

Sandy Saturdays #17:

Fairport Convention's Meet on the Ledge

(Yeah, yeah, I know: it's Wednesday and I'm writing a Saturday post. But what the hell else do you expect in the Dollar Bin? Rule following is for dopes, life is good, and I want to write about Sandy Denny...)

There are a few very serious and classic songs that make me chortle. When Neil Young yearns for a windswept Canadian sky filled with big birds on the rise I don't picture migratory wild fowl in magestic motion.

Rather, I picture a single jubilant giant chicken chugging along merrily overhead:

Take a moment, friends. Consider Helpless as Neil's paean to Big Bird.

And when Ian Matthews' mournful ache meets Sandy Denny's soulful power in the Richard Thompson penned Fairport classic Meet on the Ledge I can't help but play with the notion that the song is instead called Meat on the Ledge and that it concerns a smoking stack of succulent animal flesh perched over a ravine instead of whatever adolescent passive SI vibe Thompson was shooting for.

The young people in this song used to imagine a future in which they'd all come together for the making of song and love but cruel faith has intervened and turned them all into a pile of pastrami on a cliff.

But let's set this Arby's angle for the song aside and focus instead on Denny's vocals. Specifically, please zoom in on the 2:20 mark.

As the band's most junior member Sandy defers to Matthews for the first verse, then gracefully covers her own verse without upstaging Ian. She then sways along to Thompson's bold and incredibly simple guitar bridge and allows Matthews to carry the final verse. For the song's first two minutes and twenty seconds she's an earnest and talented band mate, nothing more.

But then, as the men in the band swing into a final pass of the song's hummable chorus, Mount Denny suddenly erupts: Sandy's momentary vibrato cry after everyone sings ledge takes the song from sweet to epic; we're no longer giggling about a red hot mass of saucy meat; rather we are hearing a bold woman interrupt the men's world of 60's music and she demands to be heard.

And then Sandy backs off; she hands the song back over to the guys and the era. She sings along.

Sandy Denny: she's like Snuffleupagus with a machete: humble, graceful and full of power.

[dollarbin]

Sandy Saturdays #16:

Richard Thompson's The Angels Took My Race Horse Away

I'm in Indiana this weekend seeing my eldest daughter graduate from Earlham University. Go Quakers.

The only thing that could have made the day more special is if the college had baffled everyone except me by blasting Richard Thompson's anthem to, well, nobody knows what, during the procession.

What does this uniquely bizarre song, for which Sandy and Linda Thompson (who was Linda Peters at that point) belt out righteous backing vocals, have to do with my wonderful daughter's big day? Absolutely nothing. But it's an infinitely better song than the derivative junk they played instead:

And I Gotta Feeling was the good song featured in the ceremony. Green Day's extra sappy, we're-gonna-make-you-choke-then-barf-while-we-sing-this-crap, ballad was played too. I momentarily can't remember how that horrific shite goes but I want to not remember how it goes so as to not have it in my head and so you can now deal with the fact that I've now put it into your head instead while I move on to a happier topic.

I've been listening to Richard and Linda reflect on I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, which is, for me anyway, on one of the top five records of all time. My famous brother guided all of us to this pretty fantastic piece on the record earlier this week, and one of the revelations is Richard's casual claim that Sandy also provides uncredited backing vocals on another of Thompson's majestic and baffling early epics, The Calvary Cross.

Is she really one of the pale faced ladies with one green eye in the ghostly choir? Let's listen and see...

Well, I hear Linda's voice on the track, that's for sure. And Trevor Lucas is doing some of the best work of his career singing harrowing bass alongside her; he's even better as the creepy bloke under Linda on Down Where the Drunkards Roll.

And if they let Trevor sing on this record, of course they included Sandy, Lucas' girlfriend at the time. Imagine asking Sandy Denny to stand aside while other people sing instead; that'd be like inviting me and my wife over for wine and sausages and then paying attention to me instead of her, or imagine hoping that one of Richard Thompson's meditations on youth and our glorious shared future will play at your daughter's graduation; those would both be dumb ass things to imagine.

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #19:

Comes A Time

Much like my underpants, I've always undervalued Comes a Time, Neil Young's 78 Nashville record that features at least 27 different rhythm guitar players.

You've got to own Comes a Time, of course, just like you gotta own some underpants. But both seem too mainstream, too boring, and too readily available in the Dollar Bin to really appreciate.

But there Comes a Time when one must stand back and appreciate their own underpants: after all, they work hard for you; they don't take your indifference personally; come to think of it, your underpants are actually pretty great.

And so I donned a pair this morning then dropped the needle on Comes a Time.

Much of my dismissive gesture towards the record comes from Shakey himself: after plodding his way through Lotta Love on Live Rust he seemingly apologizes for the song, the album, and that entire phase of his manifold musical identity, bringing a twin tone of disgust and eagerness to his next directive to the band: "let's play some rock and roll."

What's more, the album's B Side is pretty dull. Ben Keith and Neil keep themselves in cages of their own creation on just about all of it (okay, I admit, the steel guitar solo on Four Strong Winds is pretty sweet) and the result is some seriously Shakey Shmaltz.

Which is too bad, because listen to how great a song like Already One could have been if Neil hadn't surrounded himself with autoharps and happiness.

Happiness: it's not one of Young's greater musical qualities. Sorry Neil, but we appreciate you most when you are full of rage, humor or wacko intensity. During this famous Boarding House show Neil's guitar seemingly has 68 different strings on the bridge and he comes across as a mournful guy you'd totally marry and have babies with.

But let's talk about Comes a Time's A Side. The front of this particular pair of Neil Young's underpants has all kinds of groovy features. Goin' Back, with its foreign creates at play, is cosmically surreal, and it shimmers like a message of peace sent by the aliens Young anticipated in After the Gold Rush;

Look Out For My Love features the invention of Neil's signature windshield wiper guitar work and includes men with walkie talkies (it also happens to be the best song my buddy Ned dials up on his own 6 string) - I'm always ready to get out my flashlight and waive it around while grooving along to this track.

Lotta Love is cute, Come a Time is solid (even though Neil plays it too often) and Peace of Mind is chock full of Ben Keith level splendor.

Of course a lot of the enjoyment this record offers on a Shakey Sunday comes for that second voice you hear in these songs: Nicolette Larson sings on just about all of this record and she offers Young some of the best vocal accompaniment in his career.

Sure, she has an easier job here than Emmylou Harris had three years before on Dylan's Desire, but she pulls it off with aplomb and it's extra sweet to hear Neil step aside altogether and let her steal his bizzaro show on Motorcycle Mama.

I don't have any idea what any of this is about, though I fear heroin is somewhere in its big spike mix, but that's the way I like Shakey best: incomprehensibly silly and intense all at once. Clearly, no one's wearing underpants on this track.

Cheers, people.

[dollarbin]

Sandy Saturday #15:

The Sea Captain

Some songs birth worlds. Tangled Up in Blue, Famous Blue Rain Coat, The Diamond Sea, The Bells, Will To Love: sure, they appear on albums alongside other tracks, but really they serve as their very own beginning, middle and end. Unique characters arise alongside the riffs; otherwise untouchable landscapes are established within the beats.

Our attention is altogether seized when a song births a new world. There's no topless bar out there where the staff are currently standing by, ready to bend down and tie the laces of your shoe. But you can go to such a place anyway, right now, by simply dropping the needle on Dylan and letting him unfold such a space for you.

The Sea Captain, a humble, understated and self-penned track from Sandy Denny's second solo record, may seem like an unlikely choice for such distinction. But hear me out.

First, let's let Sandy tell her story:

At first we are in familiar territory for anyone who's ever listened to Liege and Leif (if you are sitting around reading this and you have not listened to Liege and Leif that is really, really weird): Sandy embodies not the titular captain but instead a deserter who takes to the sea to escape their troubles. They may be fleeing war; they may be fleeing their own family or past crimes. We don't know what they're running from, but we're instantly on their side: after all, they sing with Sandy Denny's voice.

But something weird is going on. Simply, put I'm not altogether sure that the deserter, our narrator, is human. They "fly" from the shore; later, when the ship catches fire, they once again "fly" away from it. Is it a bird? A storyteller? A ghost?

Denny switches perspectives in the final, equally elusive, verse to observe, rather than embody, the deserter as he passes by not just the boat, but also the song itself: he's gone and we cannot go with him because we, like the Sea Captain, cannot take to the air and fly.

Or, something? Likely, I've got all of it wrong. But I don't know if Sandy herself knew what she was writing; it's a poem, not a math problem.

Even so, the more I think about Denny's graceful, dense and obscure lyrics the more I remember reading an incredible piece years and years ago about another world building song, Geeshie Wiley's Last Kind Word Blues: the author is some kind of genius, and he goes on and on and on about the song, about Wiley and about the meaning of life. Imagine Greil Marcus, only with an editor and a fact checker: incredible depths.

Meanwhile, The Sea Captain is the perfect compliment to Ian Matthews' Please Be My Friend, which we featured a few days back, in that both songs present the young and aspiring Richard Thompson in the best possible light. I encourage you to listen to the track again; only this time just listen for Richard: he creeps in early, under Sandy's second verse, steps up to offer his solo, then cradles her tenderly for the rest of the track.

Thompson has called his solo on this piece one of the best in his career, and I concur. It's so quiet, so delicate; maybe the deserter dies in the ship's fire within this song, and that's how he is able to pass by the boat and fly his soul onward, leaving everything behind; if so, Thompson's solo is the sound death.

And if that's what death sounds like, wow: we have absolutely nothing to fear.

[dollarbin]

Nickel Bin #11:

Uncle Tupelo's Sauget Wind

I see my famous brother, who refers to me in true Three Amigos's style as infamous, which surely does mean more than famous, is currently busy on DoomAndGloom revisiting Tweedy and Farrar, so let's set the record straight here in The Dollar Bin by testing your own knowledge with a little true or false action:

Sharpen your pencils, Dollar Binners. True or false:

I was introduced to the band in 1993 by my 20-something counselor at Journalism Camp after she heard me cranking Live Rust.

A few months after camp I stood on a freeway off ramp with a handmade sign waiting for that same counselor to pick me up and take me to the band's only LA show during their final Linda and Richard Thompson impersonation acrimony tour.

She, like everyone else at the camp, was an actual, real journalist when she wasn't volunteering with high schoolers like me. I learned after the fact that, unbeknownst to us campers, she and the rest of the staff got fairly drunk most nights while we campers slept off another hard day of pounding out stories on actual typewriters. You got that right: I spent two weeks of my youth producing copy on a typewriter.

She'd interviewed Farrar and Tweedy after the release of the band's last record. She described Tweedy as bubbly and Farrar as monosyllabic. She complained to them about Anodyne's lack harmonica; they, in turn, looked at her with speechless wonder.

At the show she stood in the back like a grown-up. I rocked the front row, screaming and riding the rowdy LA alt-country crowd surge while Tweedy grinned and Farrar seethed. Afterwards she reported concern for my well being.

I still have my t-shirt from the concert.

Well, what do you think? True or False?

Okay, obviously not all of that is true. Number 6 is a lie: I wore that shirt out in a few short years; eventually my wife demanded that I throw it the hell away and I humbly did so, saying, "yes wife, I shall wife, right away wife."

The rest of it? Gospel truth, people. Journalists, like Uncle Tupelo, are gnarly.

Anyway, let's celebrate the band's epic greatness by listening to a song that sums up perfectly, in just three and a half minutes, everything vital about Uncle Tupelo.

Sauget Wind features Farrar's trademark baritone sorrow. Plus there's plenty of jangle from the guitar, a sighing accordion appears, there's spacious depth in the mix because Tweedy is not a show off and, twice in the song, it sounds like a jumbo jet airliner crashes directly into the studio.

The most Tupeloish fact about this song is that it's an outtake: Jay and Jeff left it altogether off their second record. Not good enough, apparently. But it's good enough for me every day since.

Unlike Farrar, I know exactly what I'm breathing for: the never ending search for more previously unknown-to-me Dollar Bin bands like Uncle Tupelo. They're out there people, just waiting for us to take note.

After all, listen the latest Rosali record... It's Neil and Crazy Horse meets Tupelo meets Joni. I trust teen journalists everywhere are taking note...

[dollarbin]

Nickel Bin #10:

Ian Matthew's Please Be My Friend

I'm tempted to title this entry Richard Thompson's Please Be My Friend. Yes, Matthews wrote the song. Yes, it appears on his second solo record, Tigers Will Survive. And yes, he sings it with his trademark earnest tenor. What's more, he's the producer on the record and I'll bet it's his own voice doubling all the backing vocals.

Furthermore, this was Matthew's second pass at Please Be My Friend, and Thompson had nothing whatsoever to do with Ian's cozy and busy first attempt:

But today's focus, the second pass, is an altogether different, and far better, track. The pace has lost its country boy band rush; Matthews now has space to croon and sigh within his own version of Dylan's All I Really Want To Do.

But really, this is just a five minute excuse for Thompson, deep in his session musician phase after ditching Fairport Convention and before dawning a human fly mask for his own solo career, to shred it up 70's style. He styles himself here with the nom de plume Woolfe J Flywheel and he does some serious flying within the track.

Wait for him during the first verse; he's standing patiently in the wings, bobbing his giant head of hair and getting ready to nail it on the first take.

Enjoy this song everyone. We all deserve a friend like Richard Thompson.

[dollarbin]

Sandy Saturdays #14:

Fotheringay's Nothing More

Fotheringay could have been the best band of the 70's. Their drummer, Gerry Conway, who just passed away last month, was soulfully nuts, their lead guitar player was basically a Richard Thompson impersonator, their rhythm guitarist could strum better than me and was an exceptionally good bass singer, their bass player could, well, play the bass, and, most importantly of course, they were entirely dedicated to all things Sandy Denny.

But it all went south quickly: their first record is brilliant but went nowhere, their drummer split to Iceland, and Sandy soldiered her way into a solo career.

The world, I guess, was barely ready for a woman to front a band, let alone for a band to exist solely in support of one. Happily, that's no longer true in music; if only we could say the same about American culture and politics...

But every bit of the band's raw and dynamic potential is on full display in the opening track of their single record. Take a listen:

The drums don't keep the beat here, they drive it. Jerry Donahue's guitar gurgles and ripples about. And Sandy doesn't sing along, nor does she posture; rather, she fills the bold, strong center. This is her song; this is her band.

Remember, this was 1970. Sandy shows us in Nothing More that she was in lock step with Neil Young, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell; each were layering new sounds around their music; each was suddenly writing in a deeply personal and mysterious manner that bore no resemblance to either Bob Dylan, on the one hand, or that era's pop music on the other.

Heady times! Hope you're having a very Sandy Saturday...

[dollarbin]

Shakey Thursday

Here's a quick note before I head out the door to see Neil himself tonight in all his ragged glory: word has it that Shakey debuted a previously lost final verse during Cortez the Killer last night during the very first moments of his new Crazy Horse tour.

This is super cool. But a hipster at Rolling Stone, whose publication totally sucks, reported news about the new verse as if he had his hands on the Pentagon Papers.

But I'm here to tell you that my famous brother, who, in case you want his autograph, will be on hand with me tonight at the show, told me about that new verse in November 2020. The Rolling Stone dude was probably in pampers at that point. I have email proof if you need it.

What conclusions can you draw from this? I'd suggest that there are several:

a) My brother: famous for a reason,

b) Rolling Stone has clearly cut their fact checking budget substantially since the dude in Almost Famous complained about all the work he was gonna have to do,

c) I'm REALLY excited for tonight, and I clearly know far more about Neil Young than is probably good for my health (but way less than my aforementioned famous brother),

d) Neil hired the wrong kid to join Crazy Horse for this tour; my famous brother would have been the bolder and wiser choice in place of Nils / Pancho / Danny.

Update: they did it all over again at my show, and they did it like champs. It's four days later and I'm still rockin' in the free world. Here you go:

[dollarbin]

Shakey Sundays #18:

Earth

It's countdown time: I see Neil Young and Crazy Horse this Thursday on the second night of their new tour. I'll be there to scream and lose my mind like a 12 year old. You'll then have to read about it all in minute detail over and over again for years.

But my famous brother, who'll also be there, has warned me that I need to brace myself: Nils won't be on stage with the band as he's busy making serious money with The Boss; nor will Pancho, who's still in retirement, and, although Neil is surely working on the necessary tech as we speak, no one has figured out - yet- how to bring poor Danny Whitten back to life. And so that means Crazy Horse is now welcoming, at least for the moment, its fourth official rhythm guitar player: one of the hipster kids from Promise of the Real Pancakes.

Here's a photo of him from the internet:

You're looking at Micah Nelson, Willie's son. Willie's 90 so either he had a kid at age 78, which seems totally possible for good old Willie, or this photo is not current. Let's google and find out... Micah is apparently 33 years old so either there's a hormone issue going on, or Willie's weed protects his progeny against aging or this is a dated photo; or all three of those things are happening at once. Regardless, I hope Micah wears this shirt while on stage Thursday.

By my count this particular Nelson was involved in at least four different Neil Young records during the dark Montsanto Years - there were two studio records, a live record and a soundtrack for Paradox, one of the worst of Young's 20+ films - which is totally saying something as many of them are largely unwatchable unless you're nuts like me - which is four more record appearances than I can personally claim with Young. Micah may even have a credit on Peace Trail as well; perhaps he programmed Neil's new robot. So, with all that under his belt and this new invitation to join the upcoming tour, Nelson's got to have something good going on for him other than his boyish good looks. We'll see.

Unfortunately, Micah will probably be on my assigned side of the stage: Billy Talbot usually sets up on Neil's right and, these days, Billy doesn't amble about too much; poor Talbot looks like he could use a walker, a hovercraft, or a whole tribe of Road Eyes to stabilize him, but he's still game and I sure as hell hope he sings a lot and pounds out some big boneheaded bass licks at the show: the dude has always given his fellow cavemen a good name.

But anyway, I've got to get my mind open to having this Nelson kid on stage so today I'm going to make myself listen to another Promise of the Real Potato Salad Neil Young record. We've already survived, barely, the first of them and I'm not listening to that overwrought codswallop all over again; I could sit through their second studio album together - it sounded cool for an anticipatory moment back in the day with its Time Fades Away meets anti-Trump vibe - but that record turned out to have a circus themed song on it that shook my soul down to a wounded, terrified core, so that's out, and there's no way I'm going to sit through another screening of Paradox any time soon: I feel like it was mostly iphone shots Micah and his band mates in period dress lined up and waiting for access to outhouse crappers.

So that leaves Earth, Young's nutty live-but-autotuned / field recordings record from 2016. I listened to the whole thing a few times way back in the day: I laughed a bit, got into it for moments and then never listened to it since. All that changes right now. Micah Nelson, please don't ruin my day.

The album sounds okay! It opens with Mother Earth, which, as I've discussed elsewhere, was the wrong song to end Ragged Glory with. But it sounds pretty lovely here with Neil alone on his pump organ. Go Neil, go.

But midway through the song Neil pasts on some professionals' studio vocals in an effort to ruin the good thing he had going; my memory tells me that he does the same on just about every song; Neil called the additions "edgy" at the time; I'd choose another descriptor. "Dumb" could work. Or "wacko". But let's just settle for "good old Shakey".

Because they're not that unexpected. Neil is surely a big fan of Dylan's Christmas record and Micah Nelson wasn't even a twinkle in Willie's eye when Young brought in a full boy's choir for Touch the Night, instructing the kids to sing joyfully along with him about a fatal, or perhaps just harrowing, midnight car accident; they're probably all still in therapy.

And remember, there's a 100 person choir out there who are still wondering if that session in which they sang about nausea and sexual death actually happened or whether it was all just a crazy dream.

We're fairly deep into this whole Shakey Sunday thing and I'm probably failing miserably in my originally stated goal of explaining, at least to myself, why Neil Young? But I want to suggest the obvious point here all the same: Neil Young just does whatever the hell he wants and typically that means doing something utterly wacko. And we love him for it.

So go for it Neil: bring in a pro choir and have them sing the names of gas stations with earnest polish while you do your crazy grandpa routine! It'll be totally edgy. I guess.

The other wacko, or truly Shakey, choice here is shoving a whole nature documentary into the record. Again, we probably should have seen this coming: Young's songs and focus at the time were almost solely on climate change concerns, and ever since his very first film over 50 years ago, there are often crackling fires to be heard on some of his best songs. Plus he came of age hearing the rooster in The Beatles' Morning Morning and the dogs chasing the train on Pet Sounds, and there are bird cries layered into Young's fantastic original version of Pocahontas.

There are times on the record when Young's assembled monkeys, badgers and hornets sound totally appropriate. For example, every time they interrupt a song from The Monsanto Years, I'm totally into it: I'd rather listen to bears bellow than hear any of the songs on that record anyway.

But hold on, I just fired up disc two on my trusty IPod (no, of course I don't own this record on vinyl; I don't have 165 dollars to spare on the CD-Rom compatible blue ray download immersion set complete with pan pipes and rolling papers likely available on Neil's forever beta website) and either I'm currently drunk (well, maybe I am sorta: how the hell else do you expect me to make it through 4 hours of frog sounds mingled with The Promise of Real's bongos on every track?) or Box Store, another of The Monsanto Years' problem tracks actually sounds pretty great here.

Let's paste it in and give it another listen; you tell me: does this song still suck or is it a sweet space opera about Walmart?

We've got a car horn honking and ambiance and then it's time for a typical Neil Young song. Yes, I know, the choir croons a lot of sophomoric and terribly rhymed nonsense about Volkswagen being too big to fail and too rich for jail but there are no bongos to be heard, Neil's own vocals are strong and there's all kinds of 90's style remix action going on interspersed with vintage Shakey guitar shredding. This is actually pretty damn good. And when Neil drops a huge F-bomb about TV toward the end and then start ordering us all into line before dropping some real bombs, then frogs, on our faces I'm ready to award Micah and his preteen band mates honorary middle school diplomas. They likely need them.

And what about the songs we actually liked to begin with? Vampire Blues sounds pretty cool, I guess: Young's vocals are great anyway, the Chevron tie-in is so meatheaded that you've got to bow down, and Neil does demonstrate that he can successfully play the song while not totally wasted.

But Western Hero just sounds dull and After the Gold Rush, with its rampant participation from a sentient being, is downright horrifying. And yeah, after 34 years I'm finally into the song Love and Only Love now that I have it on vinyl but, for god's sake, why is there a 28 minute long version here complete with a whole orchestra pit filled with every bongo Joe Freakin' Lala ever owned and every member of Willie's rampant progeny wailing away?

Come on, Neil: you could have given us the rest of On The Beach in that same time instead. For the Turnstiles would feature baseball bleacher chatter and whale voices while the oblivious choir chants "Ten Dollars at the Door" with no idea whatsoever that they're filling in for pimps; the title track could clobber us with intermittent wave crashes, seagull screams and radio static before devolving into penguin screams. Could be pretty damn edgy.

Knowing Young, he's probably got that exact album in the can already; yet another new live album, F#$%kin Up, came out earlier today; so knowing Neil, Earth 2 will be out in mid-May